Fall, Fly, Laugh
by Mab Browne
Summary: Three people who know the truth about Taki and Klaus, and what they do.


They panic for a while when they can t find Taki, and the relief at discovering that he's in Suguri's room almost comically overwhelms their concern over his health, as they pass on the news.

"Lieutenant Lord Taki's knight has been arrested. He's been found with compromising documents. He's a spy."

Suguri nods through the bare crack that he's opened in the door and assures Uema and the staff officer that he will pass the news to Lord Taki, before he shuts the door and leans against it, filled with elation and grief. His gaze falls on the bin filled with bloody swabs and he covers it with a shirt. He has to smuggle this waste out and burn it, and his heart burns within him also. The only reason he didn't shoot Klaus where he stood was that he would have had to explain. Explain the swabs and the blood, explain the violation, explain sacrilege and all its consequences.

He sits beside Taki's bed and waits as the morning wears on into afternoon. Eventually, Taki stirs. He rolls over and winces, lifting eyelids as leaden as the heavy hours that have passed.

"Klaus?"

"He s not here. Rest."

Taki's eyes open more fully. He stares at Suguri like a condemned criminal, resentful and ashamed. Suguri hopes that Klaus is already dead, because now he's sure that there was seduction before there was violation. Klaus is a mad dog but Taki willingly let the foaming jaws close around him at least once before this. Then Taki's hand reaches out, and Suguri encloses it in his own. Some strain eases in the young man.

"Where's Klaus?" Taki asks again, and Suguri understands this time. Taki is asking if secrets are still secrets. He pauses, faced with a terrible temptation.

"He's been arrested," he says, hoping that Taki will think that Suguri has reported Klaus's attack.

The hand in Suguri s grip is withdrawn, and Taki struggles up onto an elbow, his eyes cold and hard as flint. "You dared?" he snarls. Suguri has known Taki since he was a small, serious child of eight. He's tended him through the small illnesses and the great, he's followed him into battle, and at the whiplash of those word he drops to his knees beside the bed.

"No. But Hasebe found documents - my lord, he s a spy! They re interrogating him now." Let them have executed him already, Suguri prays. Let him be dead.

There's a silence. "He's not a spy. Help me get dressed."

Suguri looks up then. Taki is struggling awkwardly with the bedding, tangled in the sheets, and Suguri stands to help him and then lays one hand gently upon a wrist bandaged to hide bruises and the mark of Klaus von Wolfstadt"s nails. "Sir. Please. Consider." He swallows. "It might be better. To let this matter take its course."

Taki stares as if Suguri has gutted him. That's the least of what would await Klaus if Suguri tells the truth, and he'd deserve it and more. Then Taki's face becomes resolute. "Go to my room, and fetch my clothes, and my sword. Hurry!"

"You re still not well..."

"Then make me well."

Suguri sighs, and picks the dose carefully. He administers it and collects Taki s clothes his uniform, his coat, his sword. He can't say anything. Some men must run towards a cliff, even though the fall is inevitable but perhaps Taki thinks he'll fly. Suguri can only wait and fall or fly with him.

Chief Aide de Camp Hasebe knows trouble when he sees it, and Klaus von Wolfstadt has been trouble from the first. He's too big, too insolent, too untrustworthy. He is far too obsessed with Lord Taki, and that distasteful, unrestrained gesture, the kiss to the hem of Taki s robes, was one gesture too many. Hasebe has responsibilities, and he has ambitions, and he won t let some shock-headed foreigner bring Hasebe down.

Hasebe corners Major Uema soon after Wolfstadt is knighted, and questions him very closely about the journey back to the estate and the division. It s a painfully difficult conversation, punctuated with long pauses and many averted gazes. (The way that Wolfstadt stares at Lord Taki - Hasebe has stared like that at a bowl of food after privation, to his intense shame at his lack of self-control.) The pauses and averted gazes are nonetheless informative, and they shape Hasebe's fears into clear intention. Wolfstadt is a pollution that must be cleansed from the Reizen blood.

The discovery that he is a spy, and a traitor to his lord, is the blessing of heaven until Lord Taki's sword splinters that blessing along with Hasebe's own prized blade. But Wolfstadt is reckless, a show-off trying to convince an untried, infatuated boy of his loyalty. Hasebe is not fooled. And Azusa is very nearly a foreigner himself, and also needs to prove his loyalty. Let the two foreigners cancel the other out. Let Lord Taki and the reputation of his lineage be protected. Hasebe's own reputation and the honour of his family ride with the Reizens. He won t go down. He won t.

This is the letter that Claudia wrote:

My very dear Taki

Already, I know that I've committed at best some terrible breach of etiquette, perhaps even some dreadful crime, in addressing you so informally. But I know that if Klaus is there when you read this that he s laughing at both of us for caring, so I will trust that I may be forgiven any transgressions.

There is such a gulf between us; of history, and culture and experience. Of one thing I'm sure. We both of us love Klaus, and that is why I've gathered my courage to write.

Klaus loves you. He has loved others and lost them, not always simply to the fortunes of war, because Klaus does not always love wisely. I have received letters from so-called friends of mine, only too glad to stir up scandal under the pretense of ensuring that I receive no unpleasant surprises. The only surprise was the spite of people I had thought I could trust. Forgive my plain speaking, which is not so plain. If you know of what I speak, then no more is necessary, and surely you must know.

Klaus told me so much, and yet, so little about you. He keeps his own counsel, my brother, even if he can't always guard his actions so well. I know that you re younger than him, and possessed of a very important, grand even, social position. I also know that Klaus has given up everything for you, and that frightens me a little. Klaus will lay everything at your feet, but he s done that before and had it kicked away. I know that you must value my brother, but what he told me of his role as your knight also frightens me. That he should be so entirely in your power, without any other friends... I beseech you to treat him with kindness.

Dear sir, (and now I become formal. How foolish of me) you are Klaus's liege-lord, as I understand it, but you are also his friend. He needs both anchors to hold him steady, my dear wild boy. Take care of him for me.

Yours with most sincere and deep respect

Claudia Baroness von Gedern

She never sends it, of course. She chose a husband she loves dearly, not least for his rejection of the political sphere. It s because she knows politics that she leaves the letter in the locked drawer of her secretaire for no more than a week before she burns it. Watching the flames devour the paper, she imagines the smoke and ash rising from her chimney, floating their way across the continent.

Somehow, perhaps the words will settle upon Taki Reizen and her brother. She hopes that Taki will understand. She knows that Klaus will laugh, if he can. Let her brother laugh.


End file.
